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Friday, November 24, 2017

When you try something new, there’s
no hiding that you’re usually very bad at it.For many, the easiest way to eliminate that feeling of angst is to quit
practicing and go do something else, so that’s what most of us do.Take me for example, I love music.In fact, going into school, my choice was
science or music.I knew I didn’t want
to be a teacher so I chose science, but continued to take music as a minor and
while I stopped playing the flute and sax, continued with piano whenever I
could get my fingers on the ivory and singing.Over the last 10 years, life has gotten in the way and these days aside
from singing in the car, I’m not very musical.I decided that perhaps I would take up a new instrument, guitar, because
I have lots of family and friends that play, I would be able to sing and play
and unlike a piano, and I can take a guitar virtually anywhere I want to.

I did not however, consider the angst
I would feel for not being good at an instrument as soon as I picked it up. Nor did I consider the fact that when I play
piano or sing, even from memory, I visualize the notes I am playing or
singing. When I pick up the guitar, I
can’t visualize the chords (yet) and that has been paralyzing….and more than
just a bit humbling. I know that
practice makes perfect and I have resolved to start taking lessons, get out of
my head and just try.

What does this have to do with
infection control or the use of disinfectants?
Well, as I’ve talked about in past blogs, perfecting cleaning and
disinfection practices can save lives.
More importantly however, practicing the safe use of disinfectants will
save lives. Did you know that more than
30 million workers are exposed to hazardous chemicals in their
workplace? In North America, because of
the safety concerns we have programs like OSHA in place to protect
workers. Most of us would immediately
think of the SDS as a need to ensure that information on the product is readily
available. While the SDS provides
valuable information, many overlook the importance of Work Place labels.

Back in 2015, I wrote a blog “Mommy, this water tastes funny” where a
son of a friend of mine drank bleach. It
had been decanted into a water bottle by cleaners while they were on vacation
and left on the bathroom counter. The
bottle looked exactly like the bottles of water he had been drinking from for
the last several days. I also know of a
story of a healthcare facility where spent hydraulic fluid had been put in an
empty Enzymatic Instrument Cleaner bottle and put under the sink…the sink where
instruments were reprocessed. No one
realized what was going on until surgeons started complaining of the fact that
instruments were slippery to touch. Just
last week, one of my teammates took a call from a veterinary clinic who had
taken a bottle of diluted disinfectant and used it in their dental water lines,
mistaking it for a bottle of distilled water.
They performed several procedures with pets and were concerned of the
side effects for potential ingestion of the disinfectant.

Luckily
in all cases, no one died and no one was seriously injured, but none of these
stories had to happen if we were practicing safe chemical use. Safe chemical use is not just about reading
the SDS or wearing the correct PPE. Most
importantly, safe chemical use means that the bottles the chemicals are stored
in are correctly and adequately labelled so that it’s not just you that knows
what the bottle contains. While the
following is verbatim from “Mommy, this water tastes funny”, I feel based on
this week’s call it is worthy of repeating what a workplace label must include and you can see, it’s not so much that it’s a
daunting task:

The long and the short is that we need to be
safe. We need to protect ourselves and
we need to protect our employees.
Ensuring that every bottle of chemical you have in your facility is
properly labelled with a work place label is a very important safety step!

Friday, November 17, 2017

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I like to get my geek
on. Thankfully I was alone in my office when I squealed in delight after reading a Letter to the Editor in the October
Special Edition of the Journal of Hospital Infection. The letter talked about a pilot
study comparing the level of microbial contamination found in hospital
washrooms when paper towel or hand dryers were used.

I HATE hand
dryers. While I try darn hard to be
environmentally conscious and sit on our company’s Green Team, when it comes to
drying my hands I have no qualms about the number of trees needed to be cut
down to make paper towels. Why? Because
there is enough evidence to show that hand dryers impede hand hygiene and as
this study shows when looking at microbial contamination washrooms (restrooms)
with hand dryers had higher levels of microbial contamination than washrooms
that used paper towel.

Some may be questioning my comment about hand dryers
impeding hand hygiene, but back in 2012 guest author Prof. Todd from Michigan
State University discussed
a survey where researchers found that hand dryers, because they can only
accommodate a person at a time and can take up to >1 minute to adequately
dry hands, can lead to avoidance of their use, incomplete drying of the hands or
worse, wiping clean hands on clothes…..
I will admit there has been more than one occasion where along my
travels I have encountered either a line up to get to a hand dryer or gave up
on getting my hands dried due to insufficient air flow and/or heat.

In this particular study, the researchers sampled 2
washrooms within one hospital over a period of 3 months. Their sampling regime included air sampling,
environmental sampling of 5 locations and collecting dust samples. In reviewing the data, significant
differences and trends were seen. In the
washroom that utilized paper towels lower microbial levels were found whereas
in the washroom that employed the hand dryer the microbial contamination was
higher, had a greater range of bacteria and in general the floor, the hand
dryer and the dust samples were more heavily contaminated.

I knew there was a reason I had such a loathing for hand
dryers….this study simply continues to build upon my bias towards the need to
ban their use. The fact that WHO advocates to dry hands
thoroughly on a single use towel strengthens my resolve to avoid the use of
hand dryers at all costs!

Bugging Off!

Nicole

PS – I know more investigation is needed, but for me the
proof is in the

Friday, November 10, 2017

This week I’ve been off site at an amazing Executive
Leadership Program. It’s been
insightful, a little humbling and very eye opening. It has also been a bit sickening…..and by
that I mean 5 of the 12 people in our group came down with tummy issues and as we
found out last night talking to another group at our facility, 7 of the 30 in their
group came down with something as well.

That something...was definitely food-borne, we just can’t
decide if it was the Asian coleslaw, the cod or the avocado salad….or maybe all
3! Needless to say, I have managed to
survive enough to complete my course, but all good intentions in writing my
blog this week went down the drain (pun intended).

The upside I suppose, is this is a great reminder that where
ever we go, bugs will be there!

Friday, November 3, 2017

There are times that my self-control amazes me. Perhaps not when it comes to chocolate,
candy, chips and dip or really good cheese, but upon occasion, like my ability
to not work out is truly impressive. The
fact that we have hit November and this is the first blog of the fall to talk
about Flu Season is a great example of my self-control.

You may be wondering why I think I’m so impressed with
myself, well…..have you be following the Flu Season in Australia and the Southern
Hemisphere? Australia
has had a particularly bad flu season with >93,000 lab confirmed cases
as of August 18th which happens to be 2.5 times more infections than
the previous year. The deaths and
hospitalizations associated with the flu have also almost doubled when
comparing recorded numbers year over year.

So
what does that mean for North America? Well, if we use Australia and Hong
Kong as indicators, and we know they have grappled with one of the worst flu
seasons on record, then it’s safe to say that we may follow suit. One of the reasons is because H3N2 is one of the
most predominant strains circulating and it happens to be the strain that
wreaked havoc a couple of years ago when our vaccine was a mismatch… So, with the arrival of November we can and
should expect the flu to start showing up.
If we keep on track to when we typically see spikes, we can expect the first
hit sometime in December, about the time
that kids return home from school. Then a second hit in late January into
February when we start seeing the true colour of Jack Frost and his blustery frigid
temperatures.

Which leads me to restrooms and the flu. “Spring Cleaning”
is a well-known phenomenon with its intention to get rid of the dirt and grime
that accumulates over the winter after we lock ourselves inside to avoid the
cold. Perhaps we should develop a new
phenomenon – Fall Extermination. We know
that germs can be anywhere and we know that germs start “accumulating” in the
fall when Cold
and Flu seasons hits so maybe if we look at implementing
a few key prevention tips we can help reduce the risk of transmission:

Schedule seasonal deep cleaning at the
beginning, middle and end of cold and flu season to keep the germs at bay.

Increase the number of hand sanitizers you have
on hand and make sure your bathroom is well stocked with soap in order to
facilitate hand hygiene.

Can you move to hands free options? The less we touch, the less our hands will
pick up and the lower the chance we have to spread things to ourselves.

Just because cold and flu season happens every
year, doesn’t mean everyone remembers how to differentiate between the two and
how to try and stop from getting sick.
EDUCATE!

Encourage sick employees to head home and
recover. A sick employee is not a
productive employee and they’ll just make others sick.

Promote Flu shots; and if you can, hold a flu
shot clinic.

As we enter flu season, I hope you implement a few of these
things both at work and at home because there’s nothing worse than working with
sick grouchy people only to have to head home to a husband with a man-cold……